I hoisted Vee as gently as I could, a hand on each side of her chest, below her arms, her head lolling on to my right shoulder. Little Vee. This has been far too hard on you, I thought. I carried her into the cabin and over to the divan by the kitchen window, laid her gently down on top of the sheets.

Elsa was standing in the doorway, watching.

“Elsa,” I said. “Licia’s with Bror.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

I frowned. How could she possibly know?

“Tvist called me himself this time,” she said. “Fuck, Cal.”

“Those videos,” I said. “I was so caught up in my jealous thoughts that I was sure it was you.”

“I guess I thought it was me, also. I fell asleep at Hedda’s a bunch of times. I kind of assumed she was gaming us, seeing how far she had to push before it broke us apart.”

“When in reality it was Licia. Before and after the attack.”

She bent down, kissed Vee on the forehead. “Let’s go outside.”

I nodded. I took a bottle from the fridge, found an opener in the drawer, carried them out, and set them beside the fire.

We sat there, cross-legged, staring into the flames. Elsa took a long slug of wine. “Can I share with you a thought I’m not proud of, Cal?”

“You know you can.”

“I used to look at those grieving women in their headscarves,” she said. “With their daughters gone to marry foreign fighters. Because there’s a definite urge—don’t you have it?—to say you radicalized your daughter . . . you and your husband must have . . . something in your family cannot be right . . . You know, they chose the wrong mosque, or they put the wrong holy texts in front of her, or they beat her, or I don’t know what they did . . . And that’s what people are going to think about us.”

“We didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Most likely, neither did those poor grieving women.” She took a long slug of wine. “Ninety-one counts of accessory to murder, Cal. How is this possible? She was this . . . average girl.”

“I guess maybe average wasn’t good enough.”

“Maybe,” she said, quiet as breath. “Cal, did we do that to her? Did we make her feel not good enough?”

“We’re never going to know.”

“That’s an unbearable thought.”

We sat for a while, barely touching.

“Elsa,” I said, “that girl who welcomed Licia to the house church that time . . . was she wearing gray clothes?”

“A gray shift dress. A belt tied at the waist.”

“That day when I sent you back to the boat, did you get a look at the woman I met?”

She shook her head. “Why?”

“I’m beginning to wonder if they could be the same person. I think Milla recruited her.”